Saturday, 4 October 2014

Concrete Wargames

I have, perhaps, hinted before that wargames, wargame rules
and wargamers do not really tolerate uncertainty. This is one of the issues
there is with respect to wargaming which is one of the most difficult to
tackle, both in general and in particular. So I thought I would give it a go,
not really expecting to make much headway.

It seems to me that there are at least two issues at stake
here. Firstly, there is the creation of fictitious forces in our wargame
armies. What I am thinking of here is, for example, “morale”. Morale is often a
critical element in our rules and plays a key role in the outcome of battles.
But it is one of those things that does not exist, at least to a reliably
measurable extent.

In a set of wargame rules morale is generated as a mathematical
model, but it does not behave like that in real life. A person with a clipboard
does not pop across to the 25th line battalion and have a survey of
how the lads are feeling. Morale is a
construct of those who report of warfare, perhaps, but it is perhaps more
eminently a construct of wargaming. In perhaps over-technical language, we can
stand accused of reifying morale, taking a concept which is useful to our games
and making it concrete to suit ourselves. It could be argued that morale, at
least as it occurs in most wargames, simply does not exist.

Another issue which occurs, which needs a concrete answer
which cannot be given, is that of armies and order of battle. I have
(remarkably) finished (insofar as any wargame army is finished) my late
Persians, all 34 bases of a 20 base army, including two Great Kings in their chariots.
Why, you might ask, two Great Kings? Well, firstly, of course, I had the
figures. You might object that there was only one Great King at a time, and I
would be forced to agree with you. But which Great King is the real Great King?
Obviously, the one who wins the next battle…. The reason I had two Great King
chariots was because one came with the early Persians and one with the late
Persians, and I had never bothered to paint up the one for the earlies because
the Great King was not present at Marathon.

Anyway, having now finished the Late Persians, I am now
considering moving on to the Classical Indians, the ones who fought Alexander.
Here, of course, information runs very thin. Our sources do not say a lot about
the Indians, because they were exotic, far away and, by the time anyone got
around to writing about them, they had reconquered themselves (as it were) and
no-one was really interested in people who were on the far side of a hostile
empire (with respect to looking from Rome, anyway).

So, much of what we do know about the Indians is
conjectural, inferential and, if you do not mind a bit of sarcasm or rudeness,
frankly invented, or at least it has alarmingly little evidence to back it up.
Clearly, there is some evidence, contradictory as it is. The Indians had
archers, a few swordsmen types, javelinmen, cavalry, chariots and elephants. They had what usually passes in ancient
sources as ‘lots’ of these. At Hydaspes they had somewhere between 200 and 50
elephants, according to Sabin’s reporting of various modern reconstructions.

Here, again, the wargamer has to do some reification (have
you ever wished you had not used a word like that?). We cannot do, as historians
can, with a hand wavy ‘we don’t really know, does it matter?’ sort of response;
nor do we particularly wish to move on to more interesting subjects such as
Alexander’s sexuality (at least, I do not; classical scholars might demur). We
need some sort of concrete number. Sabin makes a middle of the road estimate of
85 elephants in Porus’ army. He might be right. How do we know?

Now, you might argue, if you had read this far, that my
claim of reifying morale in rules and my claim about doing the same for troop
numbers in armies are two different things. To some extent I would agree with
you, but in fact what we are doing in both cases is making something up to
cover over something we cannot measure.

We cannot measure morale, so we make some sort of model up
to cover the fact, and use that as the morale of the army, unit or whatever,
even though it has no measurable equivalent in real life.

We cannot measure the number of elephants at Hydaspes,
because time machines have not been invented so we cannot go and count them,
the reports we have (at second or third hand) from people who could have counted
them are contradictory. So, essentially, we have to make a reasonable guess.

The problem is, in both cases, unless we make these guesses –
a guessed model for morale; a guess at the number of elephants present – we cannot
really have a wargame on a historical basis. It simply cannot be done unless we
invent these things.

Thus, we have to make concrete these things in a wargame in
order to model them. We need a concrete model of morale in order to measure it.
We need concrete (or is that lead?) models of elephants to show a given number
of pachyderms in real life. These things have to be concretised in order to
make the game work at all.

Of course, you could argue that it is only a game anyway and
so it does not really matter, and, as a game, of course that is correct. As an
imaginary encounter, we can deploy however many elephants we like, and we
could, if we so wished, dispense with morale rules entirely, or simply make
something outlandish up.

But then I suppose the worry would be that we have cut the
final links between reality and human reason and the activities modelled on the
wargame table. Even imaginations have some real world logic involved.

22 comments:

Reification - I have struggled with wargame morale for ages - less with the idea that there is something there than with the time-wasting industry which it can become, to the great detriment of the game. And yet, though we can't give real world morale a numerical value with any scientific meaning, there are definite indicator points - at one pojnt the unit is still standing its ground, fighting back (however glum) and sometime later it is running for the hills. There was a change - some attribute of that unit moved from an OK status to a not-OK status. They do not run because lunch is ready, it is because they now feel that their situation is not something they wish to sustain. The exact point at which they go may include all sorts of contributory factors - their commitment, their training, their physical state, some new source of stress, their level of optimism, their religious beliefs, the amount of support they have at hand - it is puerile to try to give it a numerical value, but this list of contributors reads like exactly the sort of morale rule +/- table I have learned to hate.

Intuitively, I prefer the idea of discrete "fright" moments in a game, so that hits against a unit can be both physical losses and non-physical frights - the old WRG flinch and the C&C retreat flag. Problem with that is that it seems unlikely that all classes or states of troops would react in the same way to the same fright - which takes us back to the need to consider some underlying morale level (or something) to modify reaction. Back where I started.

Is application of any kind of number to represent some quality of a fighting unit artificial? Apart from a known headcount (which is a hard thing to map against actual combat effectiveness), everything we have is an estimate - an attempt to quantify a complex mixture of vague properties in a way which allows us to play a game. All the numbers written on boardgame counters are some form of dubious estimate - how they are assessed, and how they change as the result of events is bound to be simplistic to an extent.

Only alternative is the Omnipotent Umpire - they run away because I say so - you will never know why. Actually, I'm quite a fan of the Omn Ump - solves a lot of classic wargame problems - I don't think I would enjoy being in a game with one, though.

I think the problem is that for any rule set, we have to land up with something calculable, and that means, as some point, some pluses, some minuses and a few die rolls. Even a 'fright moment' has to be, in some sense, calculable, or the famous arbitrary umpire has to take over.

The best games I have had is where, abandoning the strict letter of the rules, I have stood over the table and said 'that lot look in trouble' rolled a few dice and decided that they fight on, or scarper, or point in between.

The problem is writing this down in a way that someone else will understand and / or be willing to play. Mind you, that might be why I am a solo gamer.

But everything in a wargame is reduced to a model, and normally for the rules, the model is, if not numerical, at leasat arithmetical.

It's in the nature of simulation. There's a great deal of simplification going on. A volley of arrows isn't decided by a single random variable, but it often can be simulated that way. Morale is just another aspect of that. Rules systems follow the principle of statistical design: we choose the variables we want to consider significant, and we call the rest 'error' or 'random' and roll a die.

I think that is right, but with so many variables, it is a bit tricky to work out which is important and which isn't. Plus I'm not sure how many statistical analyses of volleys of arrows have been conducted. we might just be guessing....

Morale or unit cohesion or whatever you want to name it, is one of the original game design questions. It is an abstraction so you can’t measure or truly quantify it. However, unless your goal is to study human behavior as an end in itself or to be an Einstein like physicist, it isn’t really necessary.

As a gamer, all you want to know is the result. Will they do what you want (which may not always be best for them), stand there like a heard of deer in the headlights or will they run for cover?

Is the unit getting thumped? Was it surprised? Are the troops tired or are they tough as nails? Are the officers poltroons? Are the NCO’s nincompoops? It is all really just a guess.

If the game designer’s “model” for troops on the table has some significant events that they feel are important and will make a unit more or less likely to perform as above they will be included as decision points (crikey, lions and tigers in my soup, what do I do now? – bad thing) or modifiers to the outcome of a decision point (but we have pointed sticks – good thing). Some designers have more or less decision points and some have large and small lists of modifiers. Roll a die or two to cover any loose ends and watch for the above result.

I don't think that we can do anything different, but I do think that we need to be aware of the framework in which we have to move - simplification, numerical models for complex human interactions, dodgy (in the sense of probably made up) statistics and so on.

Even AI would probably suffer from this. as you'd still be landing up with guesswork on the flight of, say, a single arrow in such and such circumstances.

So, we are stuck with it, but need to recognise our boundaries. either that or get inspiration to cross them, of course.

When one reads the writings of various commanders of men over the centuries, it is clear that while they may not use a fixed scale to measure it against they were at great pains to be aware of the mood if their troops and to know which troops they can rely on in a crisis and which ones are liable to crumble as soon ad it gets rough. We can't talk to our little mrtal and pladtic followers and observing their behaviour is unlikely to tell us anything so dome sort of rating is at least a way to reflect that even if morale is an integral part of combat rather than a discrete process.

Its slso interesting to note that modern corporations are known to try and asess the morale or employeee satisfaction level of their units by means of tests, surveys, absences and manager assessment reports.

Having filled in a few staff surveys, I can only agree with a Dilbert cartoon on the subject I saw: the pointy haired boss has the results of the staff survey, and agrees with the bald CEO that they'll change the questions to get better answers next time....

Morale is a much more complex thing; I think in WWI the British units (or the officers thereof) used to discuss which other unit they'd like on their flank - the various guards units were usually top, followed, I think by the Hampshires. Is that morale, reputation or some combination?

I was once one of the employee reps in a focus group to improve morale etc. After a very unsatisfactory employeee survey the Management rep explained to us that the employees had answered the questions wrong and asked for input on how to fix that.....

Since it is such a nebulous thing and is integral to performance in lide, I tend to prefer game systems that include it in some sort of subjective unit effectiveness rating rather than as a separate thing so that "better" units are more likely to win or at least hang around without the general/player knowing exactly why. Obviously places a terrible burden of judgment on the game/scenario designer but that's a voluntary job really.

i am still musing on the morale, effectiveness 'best' units thing. sometimes poor units can perform very well, and vice versa. Cromwell's regiment was routed at 2nd Newbury in late 1644 despite their reputation and what they went on to achieve the next year. They were experienced, trained, of good repute and so on, but simply didn't perform. Maybe we just need wilder dice?

My management's response to poor staff survey results included, among other things, "the beatings will continue even if morale improves” and announcing that another survey was in the offing to see how much they had improved in the meantime - no additional survey was ever given.

I believe it was Phil Barker who claimed something along the lines that good units were the ones more likely to provide consistent/average performance over time.

The results of any survey depends on how you ask the question: 'are you not unhappy?' will get a different result from 'are you happy?'. Some questions (is your management useful?) however, will usually give an outlet for griping.

Your management's response is pure Dilbert, though. they should be commended for living up to a stereotype.

I think the difficulty we seem to be edging towards is that units might perform on average consistently, but sometimes they don't, and sometimes poor units outperform the expectation and so on. It all gets a bit complex and unpredictable, which is why wargames are fun, but also harder to model.

Of course, if real life units always performed to spec, there would be no need for battles, the results would be pre-determined.

I've been giving some of this a lot of thought recently, particularly the morale-related aspects. There has been some work done on this recently to identify the factors which make a difference and I've tried to summarize it very (too?) briefly here http://hereticalgaming.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/some-thoughts-about-morale-and-wargames.html . Obviously it is arguable about how much we can argue back from studies generally (although by no means excusively) centred upon post-1900 warfare but I find it reasonably persuasive as a model for understanding most of the periods I have at least some awareness of.

However, it is by no means certain that most people - and the key people here would be wargames designers - have hoisted in just how much degradation there is estimated of weapon effectiveness in real combat, so perhaps there are even more areas of falsely concreted knowledge than we might suspect.

There was a period when just about every rulewriter covering the gunpowder era updated their rules to allow for Maj Gen BP Hughes' work in his then-recent book "Firepower". This is was to serve to give greater realism (of course it was, dear), which was a litany of doom to many wargamers of the day, but sadly the rulewriters almost all trotted out the numbers from Hughes' account of the gunnery experiments performed by the Army in artificial test conditions - very few of them had read the chapter where Hughes goes on to explain that these figures give no indication at all of how effective the weapons under test would be in a real battle. He goes to some trouble to list out all the differences between the experimental and the combat context - can you imagine, for example, the selected test crews being happy to let a complete misfire stand in the results? Seriously?

I believe you are spot on - weapon effectiveness may well have been very low in most combat situations - much lower than we might expect; unless the enemy is actually at the other end of your bayonet, the objective would be to make as much noise and look as busy as necessary to keep the sergeant off your back. As they used to say in the HLI, you can make them fire, but you can't make them aim.

The numbers for shooting individual and crew-served weapons seem to be in the order of 15-10% effectiveness for the first and 15-20% for the latter. That is just for doing it for real, it doesn't take into account the reduction for incoming (assuming that people are firing at all).

I wonder if the perception of incoming fire adjusts the effectiveness of out going fire. I guess the answer is that there are many, many factors and we can't model them all, or even know anything about most of them.

Of course, the slightly worrying thing is that the difference between this and something totally random is marginal, so we may as well just roll dice and the highest wins....

I don't know of anything that has specifically-looked at the reduction of effectiveness of crew-served weapons under fire, but the rough figure for small arms firers was "divide by another 10". So if a soldier is armed with an accurate weapon (i.e. a rifle from the late C19 onwards) and he is at a range and in a stance where he would achieve something close to 100% accuracy (say kneeling at 50 metres), that would leave his accuracy at 1-1.5% if he was under fire himself.

Hm; in the ECW, single figure casualties were the order of the day until one side ran away. i wonder if this is another manifestation of the same thing - the soldiers perception of how likely they were to get hurt.

I think that is right. Perhaps I could suggest that every unit within effective range of an enemy weapons is having its morale 'tested' by that experience, which is why a lot of rounds get expended outside of effective range and hopefully when that unit does actually attack, its enemy will be slightly more shaken than the attacking unit and this will give them the edge, but the casualties up until that moment will be very low. It perhaps should heavily penalize units who attempt to start an attack whilst under that fire, if it is allowed at all.

Maybe also this is a looking busy response - if I'm shooting at the enemy (even if they are out of range) I can't be accused of cowardice or not fighting. So we stand here shooting hoping the others will not get any closer and make us make another decision.

Perhaps that is why the British army puts (or put) such store by 'cold steel'. If they come at me with bayonets and not shooting, I think that they would count as very dangerous men to me personally, and thus I should go somewhere else....

"Each nation in Europe says: "No one stands his ground before a bayonet charge made by us." All are right... All are persuaded that their attacks are irresistible; that an advance will frighten the enemy into flight. Whether the bayonet be fixed or in the scabbard makes no difference...." - Ardant du Picq